


we were secrets to keep

by mollivanders



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Canon Universe, F/M, Fix-It, Gen, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-16
Updated: 2017-01-16
Packaged: 2018-09-18 00:04:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9352454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mollivanders/pseuds/mollivanders
Summary: The weeks after Scarif are tense, busy, and too fraught with emergency for much self-evaluation. She, Bodhi and Cassian had gotten piss drunk after the Death Star celebration where they'd been honored with Skywalker and Solo, and Chirrut and Baze had escorted them back to their bunks before leaving. Yavin IV was caught between spaces - between celebration and escape – and it's not until they land on Hoth, still worse for the wear, that anything close to normalcy takes hold.With normalcy came the old instincts to run, hide, protect herself with a new name and new allies.Somehow, she finds herself lingering outside Cassian's quarters instead.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Another fix-it fic with bonus Jyn/Cassian not knowing how to be in a relationship, but with obligatory bedsharing and brotp times with Bodhi. Title is from _Long Drives_ by Brian Fallon. Unbeta-ed and posted in a rush because I'm off to see _Rogue One_ again and I'm going to be useless afterwards.

When Jyn was 18, she'd teamed up with a Corellian smuggler on a deal to bust an Imperial weapons cache and sell the goods to the Rebel Alliance. The deal had gone bad - a combination of bad intel, the Rebels not showing up on time, and her partner dropping out at the last minute - that left Kestrel Dawn cooling her heels in an Imperial cell for three months. She'd never forgotten how the betrayal on all sides had left a pit in her stomach, like she’d never trust anyone again, or how it had festered during those three months, sleeping with one eye open.

That feeling was nothing compared to watching Cassian stumble off a transport, blaster scorched and with a bacta patch hastily slapped over his shoulder.

She'd almost lost him once. She wouldn't do it again.

+

The weeks after Scarif are tense, busy, and too fraught with emergency for much self-evaluation. She, Bodhi and Cassian had gotten piss drunk after the Death Star celebration where they'd been honored with Skywalker and Solo, and Chirrut and Baze had escorted them back to their bunks before leaving. Yavin IV was caught between spaces - between celebration and escape – and it's not until they land on Hoth, still worse for the wear, that anything close to normalcy takes hold.

With normalcy came the old instincts to run, hide, protect herself with a new name and new allies.

Somehow, she finds herself lingering outside Cassian's quarters instead.

+

Considering he'd almost died with her - had expected to die with her - it's surprisingly difficult for him to talk with her about _what now_. He's a skilled talker when he has to be, when he has to blend in and slip away, but staying - connecting - is antithetical to his training.

He runs into her at the mess hall, chatting with the kid who blew up the Death Star. He doesn't even know what to say, but she turns, almost on instincts and flashes him that brief smile they share now. He relaxes a fraction, but his training tells him other things.

She's not sleeping, for one. Not sleeping well, at least, judging by the dark circles under her eyes and the way her shoulders are slumped.

His training also whispers to him that everything in her file suggests she's about to run, about to disappear, and he tries to shrug it off.

(Still, the thought nags at him like an open wound.)

So when she knocks at his quarters that night and slips inside, he doesn’t protest as she curls up next to him. She’s warm and solid against him, and he hasn’t been this close to her since Scarif. He doesn’t ask questions, and he drifts off listening to the sound of her shallow breathing, one pounding heartbeat at a time.

(They’ll figure out the rest later.)

+

She's rewiring a droid from spare parts in the hangar when she feels him approach. It should bother her, being this sensitive to another's presence. It should motivate her to run before she loses anyone else.

Instead, it warms her inside.

She tries not to think about why, and turns on her heels to watch his approach.

“Captain Andor,” she says formally, rising from her position to give a sloppy salute. Technically, she's enlisted, but it's _Cassian_. He grins at her gently, slowly invading her personal space, and she becomes acutely aware of every breath she's taking. She wonders if he’s come to ask about the other night.

(She doesn’t have any answers yet herself.)

“Sergeant Erso, at ease,” he replies, and when she relaxes she realizes he's even closer than before. “Senator Mothma has requested your attendance at a briefing on tactical training.” A strategic pause, and then he explains, “The Council thinks your field skills would be useful in training recruits.”

“And whose idea was that?” she asks, somewhere between ire and amusement. Ire that the Rebels would use her time with Saw to their advantage, even though she knows it’s the smart move, and amusement at knowing who suggested it.

(She doesn't know how he keeps doing that.)

Cassian shrugs, a knowing glint in his eye. “The Council thought you might like training soldiers better than scrap work, but if you're not interested – .”

She considers for a moment, watching him. They are far too close for comfort, but somehow she’s more comfortable like this than she is when he's gone.

(More comfortable after the first night’s good sleep she’s had in weeks, if she’s honest with herself. Which – she’s not.)

“Would I be part of Rebel Intelligence, or part of the military?” she asks at last, and her preference has little to do with him so much as being tired of open combat, of having her back exposed. “I can do both both –”

(Tired of being on the run, and not knowing who her allies were, and who was already left behind.)

But it looks like he already understands this, as he has understood so many other things she never expected him to, when he gives an easy answer of _Rebel Intelligence_ and the tension goes out of her shoulders. She hadn’t even realized it was there.

“I’ll see you there, then,” she answers, and waits for him to leave (somehow wishing he wouldn't).

Maybe he feels the same way, but he does leave. Rebel duty calls, she thinks ironically, and watches him cross the hangar while she gets back to work on the droid. It feels good though. A purpose. A duty.

It feels familiar.

+

He's drinking with Bodhi for the third night in a row, avoiding thoughts about his coming mission – his first since Scarif – when the pilot awkwardly clears his throat after another sip of his awful looking orange drink. He’s definitely not thinking about how he’s leaving in the morning, and whether Jyn would come by again.

(They never talk about, and there is no pattern, but there are mornings when he wakes and can still feel the warmth she left behind. He cannot let himself get used to it, but all the same – he wonders.)

“We almost died, you know,” Bodhi says, and takes another swallow as Cassian looks at him in surprise. “You _both_ almost died. So what are you waiting for?”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” he answers moodily, throwing back the rest of his gin and standing to leave. Had Jyn said something?

(Jyn would not say anything.)

“She’s still having nightmares?” Bodhi asks him, and back turned, Cassian freezes, gives a curt nod. “You?” The silence stretches out between them.

“Yeah, didn't think so. You both look like hell.”

(But a spy does not have the luxury of clean dreams, of the rest between battles.

Or at least, he didn’t.)

It shouldn't make him angry, but it does. Not at Bodhi, and not at Jyn, and not even at himself.

Still, he thinks maybe should do something about it.

+

She’s finished training her first batch of recruits – recruits who were too fresh to be Pathfinders but had too much promise to ignore – when Cassian gets back from his latest mission, the reloaded K2 lumbering down the ramp behind him. She wouldn’t be in the hangar but for her recruits, two of whom are heading off on their first assignment, and whom she’d come to wish well. As their transport takes off, headed for a planet in the Outer Rim she’s not supposed to know about, Cassian catches her eye.

“Hey,” he murmurs, just loud enough for her to hear, on a slow approach to her position. At this distance she can smell the scorch of a recent battle and recognize the signs of a man who hasn't slept in days. “You're still here.”

A warm feeling builds in her chest and instinctively, she reaches a hand out to rest on his chest. He catches it, covers it with his own, and she can feel his heart pounding away, warm and solid and true.

(She remembers his heartbeat, and thinking it would be the last thing she'd ever hear.)

“Why wouldn’t I be?” she asks, curious about his meaning, and feels as much as sees the hard swallow he takes at her answer. It stretches out between them, and she instinctively steps closer.

The silence is broken by the mechanical joints of an Imperial droid head whirring from one of them to the other in confusion. Before K2 can speak, Cassian nods, squeezing her hand before dropping it.

“I’m just glad you are,” he says, and she misses the contact. Belatedly, she realizes he maybe had expected her to leave with him gone, and she wants to explain, to defend herself, to reassure him.

( _“Welcome home,”_ he’d said. She wasn’t leaving.)

“Is there a problem?” K2 asks, finally interrupting, and a soft laugh escapes them both.

“No,” Cassian answers, turning to look at the droid. He seems to be considering something. “What do we have after our briefing, K?”

If droids had eyebrows to furrow, that is exactly what K2 would be doing. “We have no assignments scheduled after our briefing with General Draven.”

She feels awkward, standing there, until Cassian shifts back towards her, his hands safely shoved inside his coat, safely away from the freezing hangar and her touch.

(Damn Hoth.)

“Dinner at the mess hall?” he asks, and a smile escapes her, the smile of a girl she never got to be.

“I could eat,” she promises openly, and clasps the smile he gives her as he heads away.

Something has changed.

( _Welcome home_ , she thinks to herself.)

+

Dinner turns into drinks with Bodhi, and they all swap stories from the past few weeks. She doesn't hear the measure of pride in her voice when she talks about her recruits, but catches Bodhi and Cassian sharing a significant look.

“You sound happy,” Bodhi says, and then shrugs. “I mean, happier than I’ve seen you.”

She takes a long sip of the wine the bartender gave her, some horrible fruity drink, before wincing and swiping Cassian’s drink to wash it away. She almost doesn't notice how his arm wraps behind her on the bar, or how he smells freshly showered, or how much warmer this planet is with him on it.

(How she’s already thinking of sneaking into his quarters again, now that he’s back.)

“It’s better work than I’ve had in years,” she allows, and Cassian steals his drink back. Bodhi is watching them with a curious look that she doesn’t want to examine too hard.

“Well, that's what I mean,” Bodhi continues. “After all, you're still here.” A barking laugh escapes Cassian as he takes another drink, and she shoots a _look_ his way.

“Why does everyone keep saying that?” she asks, old defenses flying up, but Bodhi shakes his head. “I defected. This is Cassian's life.” The man in question shifts at that, and now she can feel his body against her, a taught line of heat warming her like no liquor could. “But you...” Bodhi smiles. “I didn’t realize you liked us so much.”

She goes quiet, considering, until Cassian's voice rumbles up from his chest. “Yes, exactly,” he echoes. “You are still here.”

(A promise, open and inviting.)

A burst of celebration – Solo has bought the entire hall drinks because of some bet he won with the Princess – and the moment is gone. Cassian breaks away to get them more drinks and Jyn is left with her thoughts.

For now.

+

When she steals into his quarters that night, he pushes the covers back without opening his eyes. “You know,” he says, amusement creeping into his voice, “you really shouldn’t be able to break into my quarters without the code. It’s a security breach.”

She shrugs out of her boots and curls up next to him, the darkness enveloping them both.

“It wasn’t that hard,” she murmurs, and when he tentatively wraps his arm around her, she snuggles closer to him.

“I’m glad to hear Rebel security is no challenge for you,” he answers, his voice rumbling through her back, and she shivers, hugging him tighter.

(It takes her longer than usual to fall asleep at his side, and she’s sure it has nothing to do with the alcohol in her veins, or how his breath is warm on her neck, or how she hasn’t been near him in a week.

It’s no one of those things, she’s sure.)

+

Rebel life is busy, filled with missions and training and new recruits spilling in all the time. There are recruits who often have never picked up a blaster before in their life and recruits who’d fought their way out of Imperial complexes and Jyn finds that her days are not her own. As Bodhi gets wrapped into a new squadron and Cassian is sent out on missions, she is whirled off into her own corner of the Alliance and misses them with an ache she can’t pin down.

She's never had to work at keeping people around before, because there was nobody to keep around. She tells herself this is normal, this is part of war, but she finds herself looking for them in frozen passages all the same. She spends every night in Cassian’s quarters to make up for the missing days, and still, they don’t talk about it. They don’t need to talk about it, she reasons. They know each other better in their short time than many people do in a lifetime. They have their own language. They almost _died_ together.

(She wonders if this all true for him too, or if it just her. If she is just an asset, a recruit to the Rebellion, who got too close. A recruit who he likes well enough, but just a recruit all the same.)

She thinks – maybe not. Maybe he needs this as much as she does, and is just as unable to put it in words. But after her next batch of recruits are out – after his next mission – maybe they’ll talk then.

(And that's when Cassian comes back from a mission battered and scorched and half-dead, all over again.)

+

He’s more injured than he looks, and he knows he looks bad. He'd slapped on a patch from medkit and had K2 take the shorter, more dangerous route home, but when Jyn comes racing across the hangar and yelling for medics he realizes he must look truly awful. And he feels awful. Even K2 doesn't realize how bad he is until he starts to collapse, but before the droid can react, Jyn is already sliding into place across the icy floor to catch him and break his fall. Held up in her arms once more, he realizes that he’s probably broken a few ribs and is likely bleeding internally, and the last thing he hears is Jyn telling K2 to carry him and not wait for the medics.

The last thing he feels is her hand holding his.

+

When he comes to, he’s in a bacta tank, which means he was definitely more kriffed than he’d realized, and through the foggy haze, he can see three shadowy figures pacing outside the tank.

He didn’t realize he had that many friends.

Once out, the medical droid insists that Captain Andor is fine and will make a full recovery, but Jyn refuses to leave. Bodhi and K2 are both ordered back to duty, but Jyn refuses, inviting a court martial until Draven backs down. She doesn’t care if the droid thinks he's fine; she’s not leaving.

And when he’s resting on a cot instead of in a tank, he falls asleep easier knowing she’s there.

(She stayed.)

+

Her breath catches in her throat every time his chest rises and falls, and she has to remind herself _he’s going to be okay, the droid said he’ll be fine, it's no worse than Scarif, he’s going to be okay –_

But even the thought of Scarif, of him being injured like that again, makes her breath come short and her pulse pound in her ears, until she gives up and crawls from the chair beside his cot to a space beside him. There's not much room, but when she rests her hand on his heart again, can feel it steady and sure beside her, her breathing slows and evens.

( _He is alive. He is here. We are all here._ )

His eyes don’t open, but when his hand curls around her own she relaxes enough to eventually drift off to sleep.

+

She's doesn't much care what the other Rebels think, or what General Draven yells at her about shirking her duty. When Skywalker suggests in that mild tone of his that they deserve some shore leave (even though there's nowhere to go), the Alliance finally leaves them alone. When Cassian is released from the medbay, she finds herself in his quarters once again, unsteady and unsure for the first time since this started.

“Are you coming in?” he asks, looking up from unpacking his mission bag (at last), and she runs a nervous hand in her hair before wandering inside.

“You’re doing better,” she says, sitting on his bunk and trying to keep her voice even, looking anywhere but at his face. She’s not prepared, then, when he sits next to her and wraps her in a hug, his hand nestling in her hair.

“Jyn, it’s okay,” he says, his voice an echo through her chest, and she sniffles, fighting back tears. When was the last time she cried? “I’m okay. I came back.”

She wants to say a thousand things – it’s war, what they do is dangerous, they could die at any time –  
but she just nods her head against his chest, unable to look up.

“You always do,” she says, almost to herself, and finally looks up at him. She quirks a crooked smile at him, toying with his collar. “Nice of you to do that.” But he doesn’t say anything, and just when she thinks the moment couldn’t stretch any longer, he dips his head to kiss her. A startled noise escapes her, but as he starts to pull away her hands find his face and the kiss shifts from soft to urgent, an exchange of breaths that started back on Scarif, that carried them home, and he makes a noise in his throat she thinks she’d die to hear again.

As the kiss turns urgent, as she ends up halfway across his lap, a promise finally fulfilled, the door hisses open and the voice of a reprogrammed Imperial droid interrupts them for the last time.

“I see you are better, Cassian,” K2 announces, either oblivious or indifferent to the predicament he has caused, and the kiss breaks in frustration. Cassian suppresses a glare at the concerned droid as Jyn tilts her mouth down to his ear, stubbornly ignoring the interruption. “Yes, K2, I am,” he says. “Is that all?”

“Good,” K2 says, and then pauses as he turns to leave. “Lieutenant Rook was inquiring about you as well. Shall I tell him you are indisposed?”

“Get out, K,” Cassian says fondly – breathily – and the droid nods before the door shuts again, prompting Jyn to laugh. “Well, that could have gone better,” she mutters, dragging her thumb along his jawline. Still, she can’t stop grinning, and it's the first open smile she’s felt since before Scarif.

“True,” he says, rolling them back to the bed and dropping feather light kisses on her collar bone. “In fact, it might be better to stay here for the time being. Enjoy our so-called shore leave.”

The answer comes in a kiss.

_Finis_

**Author's Note:**

> I'm [ladytharen](http://ladytharen.tumblr.com/) over at Tumblr if you want to flail about Star Wars!


End file.
